In the past price display systems consisted of a paper price label affixed to items of merchandise sold in grocery stores so that customers could easily determine the price of each item. At the check-out stand the price of each item was manually entered by clerk into a conventional register. Also, with this completely manual system keeping track of stock and planning of a store's layout was very costly in terms of personnel, resources and money. Since the development of point-of-sale (“POS”) checkout terminals, optical scanners, and computers, the price label has almost universally been eliminated and replaced by a product code, termed a Universal Product Code (“UPC”), or a Stock Keeping Unit (“SKU”). These UPC or SKU codes are easily read by an infra-red scanner and a computer of which prompted the development of computerized systems that could handle and manipulate the product data. However, the codes are not easily read by customers, proposing the need to display product information such as price on the product itself or on an adjacent shelf.
Several systems have been developed coordinating the UPC and SKU codes with the price labels in an attempt to fully integrate a computer controlled system providing product information integrity in the areas of space management, audit capabilities and price changes, while still giving customers the product information suited to their shopping needs i.e. price, savings, and sales. Unfortunately, many of these systems are incompatible with existing systems, expensive, and all fail to fully integrate an effective control system providing space management, audit capabilities and rapid price changes while maintaining product information integrity.
In attempting to solve the product information integrity problems associated with the sole use of paper price labels, various electronic displays, employing liquid crystal displays (“LCD”) and light emitting diodes (“LED”), located at the shelf have conventionally been used to display price information. When a price change is desired, the new price can be updated in a computer database, linked to the checkout terminals, and then sent to the electronic display. These electronic displays at least have the advantage of updating price information at the shelf, however without two-way communication, between the electronic display and the computer managing the price information database, price integrity at the shelf cannot be assured. Also, prior art systems cannot specifically identify the unique location of each product in the store.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,002,886, issued to Sundelin, generally describes a system using electronic display modules located at the shelf linked with a central computer, of which also supplies information to the POS terminals. Sundelin's display system has several disadvantages. First, the modules are hard wired, making alterations to shelf and product location difficult and expensive. Second, the modules are wired in parallel making wiring layout for the store virtually unmanageable. Third, communication with the modules is only one-way, generally limiting the systems capability to provide price integrity at the shelf edge.
To overcome the disadvantages of hard wiring, other commercial display systems utilized infra-red or radio broadcast (RF) communications, however both infra-red and RF exhibit certain problems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,291, issued to Stevens describes a system using an RF broadcast system to provide two-way communication with the individual display modules. This system overcomes the hardwiring problems, however several other problem arise that affect both the information integrity and the cost of the system. For example, this RF broadcast system is not interference resistant creating problems with the integrity of the price display information even though the display modules may communicate with the main computer.
Steven's display modules are individually battery powered, creating on-going problems with the replacement of those batteries and limits the ability of the system to rapidly determine whether a module is functioning or not. The RF circuitry contained within the display modules greatly increases the cost of implementing such a system of 10,000 or more display modules. Also, this system maintains problems with the speed at which to update pricing information at the display module because a central computer has to access each module individually by a long polling process. Further, this system can not fully integrate a computer controlled system providing space management, audit capabilities and price changes while maintaining product information integrity.
A number of factors have made retail store management more difficult in recent times, including narrowing profit, increasing expenses, increasing labor costs, unavailability of desired education and skill levels in employees, and the proliferation of retail brands and products within brands. Due to these and other factors, those managing retail stores, particularly grocery stores, have given much attention in recent years both to reducing the cost of fulfilling existing store practices, and to developing new store practices.
One known store practice is the “price audit”. In the simplest case, a store that practices manual price auditing will have a list of expected prices, and on a particular day a store employee will be given a portion of the list. The employee is instructed to locate each item from the list in its actual store location, where the price will be checked. In a store where prices are marked on the goods, the marked prices are compared with the price on the list. In a store where prices are posted or displayed nearby to the goods, the posted or displayed price is compared with the list price. Despite the great labor cost involved, management at most large grocery chains will choose to perform manual price auditing on a more or less continuous basis. The management goal is typically that every price will have been audited at least as often as, say, once per quarter.
For many reasons, manual price auditing is less than perfect. It sometimes happens that a product is displayed in multiple store locations, for example, yet the person performing the audit will not necessarily know to continue searching after one occurrence of an item has been found. Thus, second or third locations of an item will miss having the price audited. Also, on a given day the employee performing price auditing will have a list of items to check, and the sequence of items on the list will typically not match the physical arrangement of items on display, so that each item on the list requires a search for the physical item in the store.
Another known store practice is the establishment of plan-o-grams. In a store that has established plan-o-grams, every section of shelving is memorialized, typically in list form, regarding placement of each item of merchandise. Theoretically, nothing is left to chance in a store that has established plan-o-grams; there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. As a practical matter, it is a ponderous task to establish plan-o-grams for a chain of retail stores. Each new product announcement by a manufacturer represents the prospect of having to update or change the plan-o-grams, as does the discontinuance of a product. At the level of an individual store, it is very easy for the physical store layout to deviate from the arrangement set forth in the plan-o-grams, whether due to inadvertence or otherwise.
Furthermore, while most stocking is performed by store employees, some lines of goods are traditionally stocked by representatives of the manufacturers, who have a natural incentive to stock goods in such a way as to promote sales of the goods of their employers. One variable that stores attempt to control is the number of “facings” of each product. A particular manufacturer would prefer, of course, that its products each enjoy a large number of facings, and that the products of its competitors have very few facings. Another variable is the shelf location. Every manufacturer would prefer that its goods be at eye level, yet not all the store shelves are at eye level. Yet another variable to be controlled is the adjacency of particular pairs of products or of product categories.
While the particular locations, facings, and adjacent goods within a store are all important, it is of even greater importance that store management be capable of ensuring that the store at least contains the goods that are desired to be present in the store. To that end, management will often maintain a “shelf set”, a list of items that are expected or desired to be found in each store. While a manual audit could be performed to confirm that each item on the shelf set list is in a store, it is desirable that store management be able to identify exceptions in a routine, non-labor-intensive, automated way.
In addition to the identities of items of merchandise, the shelf set may also include information as to the desired number of facings for each item. It is very labor-intensive to confirm manually that for each item in a store, the actual number of facings matches the desired number. Thus, prior artisans have focused on the provision of an automated or nearly automated way to determine the extent to which actual facings correspond to desired facings.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,467, issued to Failing et al. discusses an attempt to provide space management and auditing capabilities coordinated with a computer controlled electronic display system. The system utilizes rails mounted on the shelf edge that provide display module location within a 4 foot space. Communication between the rails and a central computer could be accomplished by RF, infra-red or hard wire. The space management system of Failing et al. includes electronic price display labels mounted on rails along the edges of shelves in a store. A store computer in the store communicates with the labels by an synchronous serial data link. The communications link between the computer and the labels permits the computer to address each label by a logical address and to determine the physical location of each label to within a resolution of typically four feet.
The system provides price audit lists that permit economical use of the time of store personnel during the audit. The lists are generated in such a way that the items on a particular list are physically contiguous; thus once the correct general area has been located by the auditor little additional time need be spent locating the individual items. The store personnel are able to predetermine the criteria according to which audit lists are prepared, and can adjust the criteria over time.
In this system adjacency audit lists may also be prepared. In each entry of such a list, the entry will communicate that it is desired for two particular items to be adjacent in store shelf display. The auditor is expected to locate the two items and to confirm that they are physically adjacent.
In each of these audit processes, the auditor reports the exceptions that were found; theoretically there would never be exceptions and in actuality it is hoped there are very few exceptions. In the space management system according to this system the auditor is able to provide the exceptions by a streamlined data input procedure; if performed at a keyboard, the number of required keystrokes is kept to a minimum.
In this space management system the tedious task of auditing product facings is made easier, and the danger that exceptions might be overlooked is lessened. In performing an audit of product facings, the user is able to use the display hardware, i.e. the electronic price label, including the pushbutton on each label, as a data collection system for product facing information. This eliminates the multiplicity of manual writing, copying, and keying steps in prior art ways of auditing product facings. The space management system of Failing et al., however, fails in several ways. The adjacency lists generated by the system merely shows that two products are simply adjacent thus problems with shelf location are inherent. Merely knowing the adjacent products does not eliminate the risk that competitors will move in to the space of other competitors. This form of auditing is still very tedious and time consuming, thus costly. The plan-o-gram auditing that is discussed does not change the method of auditing and planning of a store because the plan-o-gram method discussed is merely a list of adjacent products of which maintains problems with the ability to update and maintain a store plan and product information integrity is at risk. The resolution of this system is four feet obviating an inherent error in space management. Also, the modules that are employed must have complicated user functionality via push buttons which raise the cost of the system employing large numbers of complex modules, each of which must be individually and tediously visited by store personnel. The Failing et al. system therefore can not set forth a fully integrated computer controlled system providing space management, audit capabilities and rapid price displays while maintaining product information integrity.